The 365 Commitment

Years ago, I read a funny Mark Twain quote: "If you eat a live frog for breakfast, everything else will seem easy that day." This is a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that if you do the hardest thing first, everything else that follows will seem easier. This is a fun, absurd way to represent a powerful life principle that, used well, can spark significant improvement in our lives.

Recently, I started to view this same concept as "going downhill." If you quickly ascend the difficult part of the mountain early on, then the rest of the day you can spend coasting downhill. Years ago, I ran a marathon that was mostly on flat ground, except for the very end. There was a long 4-mile hill climb at the end before you got to the finish line. Everyone knew this was coming. They even had signs that said, "The wall is coming," or "You are almost there, you just have a 4-mile hill to climb!" My favorite was, "Don't give up, you can crawl up the final hill!" That created an impact on the runners. They all overexaggerated this hill in their minds, so when it actually came, it was a major ordeal.

The same thing happens during your day. Right now, as I sit and type this at 4:40 p.m., I have not had a chance to get to my run, push-ups, squats, sit-ups, or pull-ups today. This is a routine I do every day, but what normally is easy for me to knock out every morning feels pretty yucky. I do not want to do it right now. I have a million reasons why not doing the routine today would be a good idea. My mind is working double time to discourage me from even starting. I have to overcome a lot of resistance to just get started.

However, if I had done all this first thing in the morning, the rest of the day would be downhill. I would not have this routine hanging over my head right now. I could just relax after work, but nope. I have to get up the energy to do my routine. I will do it, I will struggle through it, curse and mutter in a pathetic display of self-loathing, but I will do it. This is all unnecessary and why it is so vitally important to tackle these proactive, difficult things important for your well-being as early as possible.

So, maybe the takeaway here isn't about forcing yourself to do something you dread every single morning, but more about finding that rhythm where the tough stuff feels less like a chore and more like a launchpad. It's about setting yourself up so that when the day unfolds, you're already feeling a step ahead, rather than constantly playing catch-up. Think of it as giving yourself a little head start, a quiet win before the world even fully wakes up. That way, when the inevitable bumps in the road appear, you've got a solid foundation to lean on, and the rest of the journey just feels a bit smoother, a bit more enjoyable.

I have had limited exposure to a real scientific lab environment, but I've worked with enough clients in this space to understand some of their approaches. In one instance, I heard a researcher describe a single-subject experimental design he called an N-of-1. In this design, you track a baseline using a standard protocol, then make one modification and track the results over time. This design is particularly useful for studying individual responses to an intervention, especially when you can repeat it over an extended period.

I highly recommend trying this type of experiment on yourself. To do so, you need discipline to do routine things every day and record the results. If you can repeat something every day and track the results, you can do this N-of-1 experiment and learn how diet, exercise, or behavioral patterns can impact you. The first big question, then, of course, is: How long does it take to see a meaningful change?

My answer: 90 days. You need to start tracking for 2 weeks before you make a change. For example, let's say you want to drink an additional 16oz of water every morning to see how that one small change could impact your life. You'd track your water intake for 2 weeks before making the change, then start the 90 days, drink that 16oz every morning, and record the results. Those 90 days are long enough to capture many meaningful changes in mood, energy, fitness, and health, without unnecessarily committing an entire year to an ineffective intervention.

To make this work, identify what to track. Think of this in terms of results. I track my mood, energy level, fitness level, and overall health. How you do that is up to you, but here are some basics. For mood, I simply track a 1-5 scale. 1 being bad and 5 being great. Most of the time I am a 3, but last night, for example, I was a 1. I hated everything around me, and I was just mad at the world. This morning, I am a 4. I am feeling good about things and ready to take on the day. I track my energy level the same way. Mood and Energy are highly subjective, but if you track them consistently, you can start to see patterns emerge. The others are easier. You can track weight, pulse, blood pressure, waistline, or whatever works for you. Fitness level is easy to test at the beginning and end; for example, run 2 miles and time it. That is about the best fitness test that I have used.

So what is the timeline for change?

If you change your daily routine, you can expect to see an immediate response within 1-7 days in alertness, sleep quality, mood, and perceived energy levels. That is a good sign, but that is not a pattern yet. After 2 - 4 weeks, you will start to see early patterns. Sleep, fatigue, recovery, and overall performance will become obvious. Weeks 4-8 are when you start to see some of those "numbers" improve, and your mood will start to stay more stable. After that, you'll see stronger evidence and larger physical changes, and after 90 days, if you keep going, you will see cumulative performance gains. The point is that after that period, you will have enough results to know how effective the change was.

Sometimes you can use this as an elimination strategy. I decided to eat a bowl of spinach every day at lunch for 90 days. I thought this was a good idea. What happened instead, was I felt horrible. My mood plummeted, my energy levels declined, and I started noticing inflammation in my legs and fingers while running. After my experiment, I realized I didn't react well to a toxin in raw spinach. So I removed it, and within 2 weeks, all the symptoms went away. I am definitely not Popeye; without this experiment, I never would have known.

It is quite possible that you could be doing something that is harming you through your repetitive behavior and do not even realize it. The way you are sitting, the way you get out of bed in the morning, the way you get into the car. The food you habitually eat, what you watch every night. Feeling moody and depressed frequently, and nothing works? Then what are you eating? How are you sleeping? What activity do you do most often? Identify one of them and change it. Track your mood for 90 days and see what happens. This method, although it may seem slow, provides compelling evidence when you are done.

This is real scientific evidence, even though the target pool is only one: you. You can use this methodology to conclusively prove what works and what doesn't for you. If you find something that works, keep it up, make it a habit for 365 days, and add to it where you can. This is how you can make meaningful, impactful change that can deliver incredible results. So in essence, learn to measure what is important to you, find an N-of-1 experiment to try for 90 days, and then keep what works.

When I was a young boy, I was worried about the uncertainty of things going on around me. We would go to the store, and I would be intensely focused on making sure my mom never left my sight. I would think, if I lost her, I might never get back home. I would worry that I would not be able to find food or a place to sleep. My sister would be running around, hiding, laughing, and playing like no care in the world, and I would be evaluating all possible threats and looking for ways to escape if that became necessary.

As I got older, I started to realize that even adults had little control over the outcomes in life. They may plan their trip, but ultimately happenstance, luck, fate, or just an accident would intervene, and all carefully made plans would be dashed to pieces. I saw this happen enough to where I concluded that no outcome could ever be guaranteed, and there was no safety net capable of holding up what life had to dump on you when it wanted to.

I have started to recognize this guaranteed outcome type of thinking. People often believe: "I will feel better when I know everything is going to work out." So they wait, and worry, and hedge, and hold onto what they have until they know for sure what the outcome is going to be. The folly in this belief system is that we have very little control on what life will provide, and so all the worry is pointless. A good plan is wise, a clear direction is also smart, but failing to even start because you do not know how it is going to end? That is silly.

Yet we do it all the time. There is a better way to think: I will be okay because I trust my ability to respond to whatever happens. Whereas the first way depends entirely on external circumstances being resolved before you can proceed, the latter puts the control with you, and this builds internal resolve. You don't need to convince yourself that everything will turn out well. You need to develop confidence that you can navigate outcomes that are less than ideal.

I do not remember exactly when I made the shift in my thinking, but it was sometime in my late teens and early twenties. I started believing that no matter what life threw at me, I could adapt. This thinking allowed me to free myself from over-analysis all the time and from failed starts because I wanted things to be perfect, meaning the outcome was guaranteed. I now understand that was a false hope, and as the years have gone on, I have built more resolve to take on risk, accept the uncertain, and charge ahead knowing that I can succeed, no matter what life throws at me.

This next week, I am going to try to focus on coming to grips with anxiety that is caused when you are faced with uncertainty. Anxiety can come from many sources, but this source is, in particular, quite troublesome. When the outcome is uncertain, your brain becomes highly active, and when that pairs with the anxiety of not knowing the result, it can become an emotional burden. I think my first breakthrough on this topic came when I recognized that a thought about a possible future isn't evidence that it will happen.

When an important outcome is uncertain, the brain can interpret that unpredictability as danger. It begins generating scenarios, often favoring negative ones because it is attempting to protect you. This creates a cycle in your thought process which can spiral toward increased anxiety. Due to an uncertain outcome, your brain starts to anticipate potential threats; you then worry about imagined scenarios, which leads to actual physical anxiety, as if your body is preparing itself for the pending attack, and then, to resolve this, your mind starts searching for anxiety. When you cannot find certainty to pull you safely to shore, the brain starts all over again.

The problem is that thinking harder does not necessarily produce more certainty. Sometimes it simply produces more anxiety. To avoid this cycle, actively remind yourself that just because you thought of a possible scenario about a possible future does not mean that this future state will occur. Most likely, you don't need to do anything, because this future scenario probably won't happen. Fretting, wringing your hands, and stewing over all the possible scenarios of your destruction put your mind and body into survivalist mode, so the first defense is to check these doomsday scenarios you craft in your mind earlier in the process. Before they have time to overwhelm you with feelings and symptoms of anxiety.

So, as you go about your day, maybe try to remember that it's okay to just let things be uncertain sometimes. It's not about ignoring what's ahead, but more about recognizing that you don't have to have all the answers right now. Just like you wouldn't beat yourself up for feeling a bit under the weather, don't beat yourself up for feeling a little unsure about what's next. It's a natural part of being human, and sometimes the best thing you can do is ride the wave, knowing you can handle whatever comes your way.

I am always experimenting with the best questions to ask myself or to ask during early-morning prayer or meditation: questions that provoke thought, questions that stimulate me to focus on my best efforts, questions that remind me of what is important. I have learned that the best combination of questions focuses on achievement and contribution. Currently, the two questions I like to ask myself every morning are:

“What should I be doing with this day?” and "What can I do for someone else today?"

Science has not yet determined whether God hears prayer. That's a theological question, not an experimental one. But psychology can study some of the consequences associated with prayer, spirituality, purpose, and meaning. Research has repeatedly found associations between meaning or purpose in life and psychological and physical well-being. Prayer and contemplation seem to achieve this better than any other way that I have tried.

By asking what I should be doing, I focus my soul on the purpose and meaning that I am trying to achieve. It gives me hope that I might make measurable progress toward what I am trying to accomplish in life, and when I couple that with the faith that the supreme creator of the universe will help me, well, that is a great way to start the day.

However, all ambition, a selfish focus on achievement, is not a great formula for success. I have learned that you need to keep ambition in check but also feel that, in some small way, you are contributing. This combination of focusing on achievement and contribution has been a great anti-anxiety recipe for me. At least at the end of each day, I feel like I tried to make progress, and I also tried to help someone along the way.

Success isn't defined entirely around your own advancement. There seems to be, in psychology studies that I have read on the subject, a remarkable difference between feeling good and living well. The gap seems to be filled by finding meaning and purpose in life, and a key ingredient to that is to lend aid to others or provide some aid to your community.

So, maybe the real magic isn't just in ticking off boxes or chasing big dreams, but in consistently showing up, asking those deeper questions, and letting the answers guide you. It's about finding that sweet spot where your own growth intertwines with making a difference for someone else. It’s a journey, not a destination, and every morning offers a fresh chance to lean into it a little more.

To put this into a phrase, there is a fundamental need to learn to build failure into the system without allowing failure to terminate the system. See if this rings true with you. You spend days, perhaps weeks, building the perfect system. You are finally done, and you are excited to begin following your new system. Day 1 is great; you are so pleased. Day 2 might go well, and then on Day 3, you hit a snag, something you did not account for. You fail, and as a consequence, you throw out all of your planning and kill the system. Later, when people ask you why you are not improving, you say, "I have been trying." The reality is that you spent all your time working on the system and only a few days actually following it. You built a system that would avoid all failure, but you did not account for everything, so when failure came, you gave up.

The problem is and will never be the system. Almost any system you come up with will probably be good enough to make progress with. The question is, will you show up and actually do it, or will you give up after a few days? You need to get this out of your thinking: "I failed today; therefore, the system isn't working." Rather, you need to say, "This is what happened. I accept it. Tomorrow I will try again."

People often think harsh self-criticism creates discipline. It can instead create avoidance. This is why, after some 50 years of trial and error, I finally came up with a practice that separates evaluation from condemnation. Any failure that you experience in your system needs to become information rather than identity. This gives you permission to accept that you do not need a perfect personal operating system, that reinvention is not a cycle that you need to participate in. Rather, continuous improvement is the better path.

Habits thrive in an environment where repeating behaviors can keep going despite failure. They can become automatic when your context is stable, and you are not trying to reinvent yourself every 2-3 days just because it got tough. If you are relying on motivation to carry you through the ups and downs of implementing a system for living, then you will fail. Structure should carry you, never motivation, who is your fair-weather friend.

So, when you're building out your own systems, or just trying to get a handle on things, remember that it's less about hitting some perfect ideal right out of the gate and more about just showing up. It's about setting up those little habits that act like a safety net, making sure that even when things don't go exactly to plan, you've still got a solid foundation to fall back on. That way, every stumble isn't a sign to quit, but just another piece of information helping you tweak and refine your approach, making your whole setup a little stronger for the next round.

We spend a lot of time and money trying to improve. We listen to books, podcasts, videos, and spend countless dollars on ways to improve ourselves. However, the single greatest thing that we can do to improve anything we are working on is deliberate reflection. This is rarely done, yet it is provided by many behavioral psychologists as one of the foundational methods for improving subsequent learning. It is clear that reflecting on your previous experience produces far greater improvement than just accumulating experience alone.

Let's talk about chess. One of the most important ingredients to getting better at chess is to play more. The second best thing you can do is review your games, understand what went wrong, and reflect upon what you could do better. True, you get better by playing more chess. Equally true, if you actually review the games you played and reflect carefully on why you won or lost, your chess ability exponentially improves. This is also a well-documented and known strategy for improvement.

Here is the reality. Deliberate, purposeful reflection is necessary for improvement. In the military, there is a common phrase known as After Action Review. This is implemented for the same reason. You are not going to improve and learn from mistakes unless you dedicate time to reflect on them. So military command is often trained on this concept because learning from our mistakes is mission critical in war and conflict. Nothing ever goes according to plan, so having a mechanism to review what went wrong is vital.

For a long time now, I have a ritual I do at the close of each day. I spend a few minutes reviewing what I had planned to do that day and ask myself how I did. I spend that time really thinking: Did I do well? What got in my way? What distracted me? Can I do better tomorrow? This does not take long, and I write my thoughts down in what I call my 365 commitment journal. This does not take a long time, but it provides me the mechanism to realize if I am making traction toward my goals and if not, what is the adjustment that I need to make so that I can make my goals a priority.

So, whether it's a big project, a personal goal, or just the everyday stuff, taking a moment to look back can really shift things. It’s not about dwelling on what didn't go perfectly, but more about gently nudging ourselves forward. Think of it as a quiet conversation with yourself, a chance to notice what worked, what felt a bit off, and how you might approach things a little differently next time. It’s a simple practice, but it’s one of those small habits that can quietly, steadily, make a big difference in how we move through our days and improve over time.

One of the most underestimated concepts, in my opinion, is what is known as a feedback loop. It is a highly effective mechanism, and despite that fact, we tend to dismiss or ignore the concept in planning business and personal projects. So what exactly is a feedback loop?

Simple concept, rarely implemented. For illustration, I will tell you a short story. When I was a child, I would go with my mom to Weight Watchers meetings. If you do not know what this is, it was a fad in the 70s and 80s in which women all over the country would check into these clinics once a week to "weigh in." Now, Weight Watchers provided many things as part of the program. They had a points system, nutritional guidelines, and low-calorie meals that you could purchase. They are still around and have a much more modern approach, but regardless of all the apps, online portals, and GLP drug sales, the most powerful aspect of the program is and always has been the check-in.

My mom would park the station wagon, my sister and I would climb out and follow her into the strip mall location. There my mom would check in, and they would escort her to a scale, and then unceremoniously she would be weighed on a scale that looked like one you would see in a doctor's office, and there someone would officially note her weight for the week. Did she increase? Did she decline? This would be adjudicated, and sometimes there would be a discussion group to review their progress. I noted that my mom would stay when she was declining, and when she was increasing, we would quietly slip out the side door, get back into the station wagon, and put it in neutral and slowly roll out of the driveway before my mom would fire up the 7.5-liter big block V8 engine in our Mercury Cruiser.

This check-in process, weekly, was a feedback loop. My mom would work hard on being healthy and then show up to the clinic, weigh in, and get her feedback. She would get advice on how to improve and what to do, and then she would go back and try again. This is the feedback loop, and it is quite effective.

Yet we do not do it. This is because we do not like feedback. We do not want the potential for criticism.

I remember in one of my executive jobs, sitting in a meeting with the CEO where we were discussing poor customer satisfaction results. "There must be something wrong with the data, our clients love us!?" Emphasis on the exclamation point, the question mark was to make sure that everyone in the room agreed. Reality was that no matter how you looked at the results, the customers did not think of us the same way that we thought of ourselves. Once the CEO accepted this reality, the next question became, what are we going to do about it? I had one answer: feedback loops. Crickets. My suggestion got a nod, a slight look of confusion, and then we quickly moved onto "better" ideas. I am using the word "better" with more than an edge of sarcasm.

However, feedback loops were the correct answer. The company needed to ask for feedback from our customers, learn from that feedback, make adjustments, and then check back in with the customers to determine if that was successful or not. There is no other way, in my opinion. In the software development world, you live and die by this feedback. You roll out a new software package, and you wait anxiously for the first round of feedback. It is always bad, you know that heading into it. The first glimpse is usually happiness followed by a string of "could you...what if...perhaps...I like this, but..."

This is how the product improves. This is how a company improves. This is how my mom improved. This is how we will all improve in any endeavor we are chasing. Seek for feedback, get the feedback, make an improvement, and then check back in. That is a feedback loop, and it is continuous and never ceases. This is the classic error: people view problems as one-time things, a project that starts and stops. Improvement is never a project and never a one-time thing. If you, your company, or your software product is to improve, then the feedback and continuous improvement cycle needs to be continuous and constant.

A core principle to consider in daily living is to get control of what you spend your attention on before the world does it for you. I do this with a morning ritual. Every morning I like to ask myself the question, what is the most important thing that I should accomplish today? Many times I draw a blank when asking this question, so I go back and look at the 12 goals I have set for myself. Armed with that, I decide what is going to get most of my attention that day.

Now things will come up, distractions from every corner of my life will present themselves but now I am in control. I can decide what is allowed to distract me and what is not. When I know what I want to work on today, it is a whole lot easier to defer or decline things that pull me away from that primary aim.

If you do not do this before the day starts, then you are in the danger zone. Without knowing your aim for the day, it is easy to say yes and allow yourself to be yanked around by other people's demands. Oftentimes, that is unavoidable. Your boss calls, your spouse needs you, your child is sick, true. However, I am talking about a trend over 365 days. Most days you have the choice, and you cannot choose your own goals if you do not have a specific, actionable thing in your mind for that day.

Even if your boss calls, you do have an option. Think about this. Your boss says, I need you to stop what you are doing right now and prepare those meeting notes for our meeting with a client tomorrow. That is a high priority for your boss and the company, no doubt. Normally, you drop everything and do what your boss says. However, what if you said something to the effect of - hey boss, I will get on it right away; however, I want you to be aware that I was planning on working on that strategic revenue growth plan you want me to get done today. This is not offensive at all; this just presents a very real decision for the boss to make. Two priorities - which is more important?

This framing, a polite way to say no, is very powerful. When you tell someone that you would love to help but you cannot because you are working on a really important project today, they tend to be very forgiving. This is why, unconsciously, people always ask, when they start out the conversation, " What have you got going on today? What are you up to? They are testing to see if you have room to help them with what they need. This is an important moment, and if you have already prioritized your day, you have a prepared answer.

So my advice? Come up with your most important thing early in the morning before anyone else can influence you. Decide what to spend your attention on. This will not work every day, but it will work most of the days, and that is where you start racking up points on the scoreboard of achieving your goals.

Have you heard this phrase, Get while the getting’s good? It has been a while since I have heard someone say that, but I do remember when this was a common phrase. I am not sure where this came from, and after doing a bit of research, I do not think anyone does. This is a phrase used in Midwestern areas in the USA that basically means take advantage of favorable circumstances before they change. Interestingly enough, this phrase is backed by most scientific studies in the area of human goal setting and accomplishment.

As it turns out, most things that people intend to do never actually get done. All of us are sitting on a giant bone hill of coulda, woulda, and shouda. Research I have read on this issue strongly suggests that most intentions that get done are acted on very early in the discovery of that desire. Meaning, as soon as you can implement a plan after you come up with something you want to do, the more likely it will get done. I do not remember the study, or I would provide a link to it, but it sticks in my mind that the likelihood of something getting done increased by 65% when the implementation plan was created the same day as the intention was declared.

So if you come up with something you want to do, a goal you want to achieve, it is a really good idea to create a plan to follow through as soon as you can. That still does not equate to any action on your part, but it does significantly improve the chances of something happening. Part of my daily process is to remind myself of my 12 objectives, read through them, and decide the all-important question: what am I going to do about this today?

If you can make the turn by translating your ambitions into daily action, then just by doing that simple thing, you are more than halfway toward achieving it. Even if the daily action is small, any action is more than what most people do when considering all their hopes and dreams. So decide to act now. Do something, anything, each and every day to move just a small step forward in achieving what you want. Go ahead and get while the getting's good.